From March 23 to April 30, 14 officers participated in the course at the Didactic and Managerial Training Center in Florence. The new course, designed on the basis of the former Methodology of Didactic Training course (MeDid), focused on the use of modern training methods such as e-learning and outdoor methodology, which on the one hand make the participants‘ learning more effective and on the other constitute additional teaching tools that every trainer can use in their professional activities. The course consists of three distinct phases: two days in person, where, through outdoor activities, participants ’build‘ the group through role-playing games focused on team building and trust; three weeks of distance learning, where some key concepts on communication and the psychology of learning are taught through a model of ’cooperative learning’ supervised by the Centre’s tutors; and finally three weeks in person, where the theoretical content learned remotely is consolidated and role-playing, exercises and simulations are used to acquire key skills for a trainer, such as planning the teaching process and effectively managing the classroom group.
The closing ceremony of the course was attended by the Commander of the Institute of Military Aeronautics Sciences (ISMA) in Florence, Brigadier General Claudio Salerno. “The new course of the Center – said General Salerno – is a fundamental step in the training of the instructor’s professionalism, who, thanks to new methodologies, in addition to developing the focal competence of classroom management, adopts tools and methods to implement their knowledge in a perspective of constant self-training.”.
The Commander of the Training and Management Center, Lieutenant Colonel Gennaro Di Napoli, stated that “the new educational path is the result of a specific focus on competency-oriented training, designed and evaluated in a systematic way to ensure a cost-effective relationship in line with organizational needs.”.
The training model adopted by the Center for Didactic and Managerial Training is based on educational design and the evaluation of training quality. In this sense, the 1st Training for Trainers Course was also evaluated using the scientific tool of item analysis, which allows observing the learning differences of participants and thus measuring the effectiveness of the training program.
The Course is part of the new professional pathway for military trainers, which includes a basic level 1 course and, for those involved in various ways in complex and important training courses, an advanced course in Advanced Training, designed and managed by the Centre in collaboration with the University of Florence, Department of Psychology, which aims to provide techniques and tools for designing and evaluating content to ensure competence and the ability to use appropriate methodologies based on the audience and the objectives set, in a perspective of developing that culture of ‘ongoing training’ that is now the strategic lever for every organizational context.
